Mediaboss Marketing

General Motors has announced that it will no longer advertise its cars and trucks on Facebook according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The poor performance of GM ads on the social network isnt necessarily an indictment of Facebook advertising, though. It may just be the wrong thing to market on Facebook.

The beauty of Facebook--and Facebook marketing--is the social aspect of it all. A commercial like the post-apocalyptic Silverado ad GM ran during the 2012 Super Bowl has tremendous appealon television. However, a social network is a different medium entirely, and it takes a completely different strategy to conduct a successful marketing campaign.

Facebook will miss GM's $10 million, but not much.Facebook is about word-of-mouth. The value of marketing on a social network is the sharing between friends and family. One person tries a restaurant and likes it, and shares that experience with the rest of their social network. Someone finds a pair of shoes that are comfortable, and posts it online for everyone to see. That type of interaction is less likely for big-ticket items like cars, but its a gold mine for small businesses that cant afford Super Bowl ads.

One of my PCWorld peers shared research from a Wordstream research study indicating that the click-through rate of Google ads beats Facebook ten to one. Based on that information alone, it would seem that any business would be better off marketing with Google ads instead of Facebook.

Facebook is nowhere near as mature as Google--its primary rival--when it comes to online advertising. But, it has the audience, and that audience spends more of its online time engaged on the social network than doing anything else, so the potential is there. As Facebook evolves and expands its marketing options, it will be fertile ground for online advertising--just maybe not for General Motors.

Larger companies like General Motors, or Coca Cola, or McDonalds can still benefit from marketing on Facebook or other social networks, but it should probably be viewed from the context of brand penetration and recognition as opposed to trying to measure sales resulting directly from the ads. Smaller businesses, on the other hand, can hit the jackpot with the right Facebook marketing campaign, and word-of-mouth advertising of the social network.

The $10 million account was a lucrative advertiser for the social network, and the ad revenue will be missed. But, the loss of GM as an advertiser wont exactly break Facebook. Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011 from advertising, making GM a mere fraction of a percent of the overall pool.

You can follow Tony on his Facebook page, his Google+ profile, or contact him by email at tony_bradley@pcworld.com. He also tweets as @TheTonyBradley.

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Why Facebook Marketing Doesn't Work for GM

NEW YORK, May 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Buddy Media, the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world's top ten global advertisers, today announced many industry firsts as part of major enhancements to its social marketing suite. The enhancements -- including a unified social data API, conversion, campaign and goal tracking across paid, owned and earned social media efforts, and a new mobile content development platform enable brands to unify their social media programs with one enterprise social marketing suite.

"Social media marketing is anarchy right now within brands and agencies. Buddy Media is the only company to provide a unified solution that helps our customers to organize their teams, optimize their social programs to deliver real business results, and repeat," said Buddy Media Founder and CEO Michael Lazerow. "Buddy Media continues to lead the way in social marketing software, and our new product enhancements demonstrate why we are trusted by the largest brands, agencies, publishers, and retailers in the world."

Buddy Media is the only company to be named a charter Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, LinkedIn Certified Developer and Google Engagement Solutions partner. The company's new industry-leading enhancements include:

Unified Social Data API

Buddy Media is the only company to allow brands to break down siloes with a unified social data API for their social media presences, conversations and ads. Brands can now:

"It is essential for brands to be able to easily export all of their social data programmatically, and integrate it with existing CRM, email or other business process software, so social can be truly integrated into greater business decisions," said Lazerow. "It's another first for Buddy Media to be able to give brands all of their social data, across paid, owned and earned media in one API and one software solution."

Universal Comprehensive Conversion/ROI Tracking

Buddy Media is the first social marketing software company to launch universal conversion tracking across its entire social marketing suite. Brands can now see in real time which content is performing best, and specifically which social posts, applications and sharing activity drive the most conversions. For example, if a user posts several updates to a social stream that link to a Buddy Media social application, the user can track the conversions driven by each specific update, such as a form submission or a video view.

"It's not enough for brands and agencies to only know qualitative data such as shares and comments. They also need to know specifically which content is driving the most actions," said Lazerow. "With Buddy Media, you can now optimize content specifically for actions, not just engagement."

Mobile application platform

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Buddy Media Leads Industry Standards Forward With Unmatched Enterprise Social Marketing Suite Enhancements

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Posted 10 May 2012 21:52pm by Heather Taylor with 2 comments

Today, LinkedIn launched its inaugural Financial Services Summit in New York which focused on the role social media is playing in the financial services industry. The first panel brought together representatives from American Express, Citi, Fidelity Investments, Prudential Retirement and Hearsay Social to talk about using social media in financial marketing.

It was curious to see a panel on social media where only two out of six individuals on the panel have Twitter accounts. One was Clara Shih, who runs the agency Hearsay Social, and the other, Frank Eliason, SVP of Social for Citi. The panelists' lack of Twitter accounts felt like a microcosm highlighting how most financial service organizations are behind in social media.

Not that Twitter is the be all and end all of social media, it is a communication channel for 140 million active users. Saying that, in LinkedIn's new findings released today, financial advisors are mainly reaching out to prospective clients on LinkedIn with Twitter only used by 8% of them. Even brand identity building primarily takes place on LinkedIn over Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for those working in an advisory capacity.

Though the panelists did mention communication on all platforms, a lot of the issues they are facing aren't about where the conversations are taking place. It's rather that financial institutions need to put customers at the center of their decisions as well as enable their employees to do the same.

Below are a few of the key takeaways from each of the panelists. These points could be taken across any organization, especially those who have to deal with compliance issues and regulatory bodies:

There are two main things that Shih highlighted about how social media is shifting the way financial services market themselves:

1) Proliferation of online identity where people freely sharing what they do, who they are, etc. is very valuable for the financial world. When people get married or have a career change, these are great triggers for financial services discussion and this is when financial advisors and institutions need to reach out to customers.

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The role of social media in financial services marketing

When MySpace ruled the social media world in the early 2000s, everyone believed social networks were only sources of entertainment. Ten years later, social networking has not only taken a central role in our daily lives, it's also integral to any successful business strategy. If you want your business to succeed, it better have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or any number of specialty social sites like Pinterest or SoundCloud.

Until about five years ago, however, the true impact of these networks could not be measured precisely. But now, we can see that the social networking boom has unleashed great waves that are breaking business models left and right, and it's all for the better.

Social media give companies a chance to humanize themselves, giving fans exclusive content in return for their loyalty. Not only do companies gain more fans over Facebook and Twitter than any other platform, but companies can use one of several analytics tools to measure the growth of their brand on those networks to find out the topics or methods that resonate best with fans. It's an effective strategy, and it's helped change the fortunes of several companies on the brink of solvency.

Jeff Ragovin, the co-founder and chief strategy officer at Buddy Media, spoke at Mashable Connect 2012 in Orlando, Fla., to explain why companies must "adapt [to social], or die." In his lecture, he used three companies -- Mattel, Ford, and Kodak -- as poster children for why social media are an essential part of one's marketing strategy.

Mattel and the Bald Barbie

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On Dec. 20, 2011, a Facebook page was launched for a "Beautiful & Bald Barbie," but it wasn't launched by Mattel. The page was started by two women -- Jane Bingham and Rebecca Sypin -- and its mission was to build enough momentum to eventually petition Mattel to create a bald Barbie for kids with cancer.

When it launched, it started because Bingham and Sypin both had daughters who lost their hair due to cancer treatment, and they wanted a bald Barbie to make the baldness feel "normal." The story spread fast, and the Facebook page grew from 0 to 40,000 fans in a few weeks. A month later in January, the story got out to media outlets. By March, the page had 150,000 fans. Thousands of photos and stories were shared about kids with cancer, and more than 150,000 people poured out petitions to Mattel, and pictures of their own children fighting cancer, all for the sake of getting this doll made.

Finally, on March 27, Mattel announced it would produce a bald Barbie with wigs, hats and scarves.

"Play is vital to children, especially in difficult times," Mattel said.

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Social Media Marketing Strategies: How 3 Companies Changed Their Fortunes With Digital

One city. One focus. One hundred women.

That was the message presented Wednesday when the Milwaukee Health Department, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Zilber School of Public Health, launched a social marketing campaign to reduce Milwaukee's infant mortality rate and increase healthier birth outcomes.

The online campaign, called the Women 2 Women for Healthy Babies Project, is a series of videos that will be posted over the coming year. The videos draw on 17 hours of interviews during which 100 women of diverse races, cultures and ethnicities describe their common experiences as mothers, aunts, grandmothers and neighbors.

"This video project represents a chance to celebrate mothers and to learn from their experience," Milwaukee Health Commissioner Bevan Baker said.

"With this project, we hope to reach the community with parenting wisdom from credible, culturally relevant sources," he said.

In other words, said Bonnie Halvorsen, assistant dean of the School of Public Health, rather than listening to lectures by people in lab coats, those who watch the videos will become engaged with "the real-world stories and experiences of people like themselves."

A montage displaying the diversity and emotional range of the videos was shown to about 400 business and community leaders gathered for the United Way of Greater Milwaukee's annual Women's Leadership Luncheon.

"The women who participated in this project discuss everything from prenatal care and breast-feeding to the importance of involving fathers and avoiding tobacco exposure," said Magda Peck, founding dean of the School of Public Health. "These are issues important for all parents to be mindful of."

The infant mortality rate in some Milwaukee neighborhoods is worse than many Third World nations. Last year, 100 babies did not live to see their first birthdays. While the city's overall infant mortality rate is declining, the racial disparities increased in 2011, when African-American babies died at three times the rate of white babies.

The project's Web page is expected to be launched June 1. Links to the videos, which will be updated weekly, also will be found at the School of Public Health's website, www4.uwm.edu/publichealth.

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Social marketing, video seek to cut Milwaukee's infant mortality rate